Stone and Fire, Fire
and Stone
The sea sounds its regrets against rocks each year.
None of us
had learned a kind of gentleness,
and this
one could hear in our words, sharp as they were
as they sank through the air on our porches. Fire
is what
comes to mind when I think of us talking, the sea
and its
endless murmur nothing but backdrop like trees.
How odd that the mind would settle on heat and fire
to
describe the words that fell among us, not gold
or the
golden, but the raw flicker that consumes things
indiscriminately. What privilege affords such liars?
To speak
of Life, we mentioned paintings by Renoir
and the
flawless sonnet that recounted the wall
that circled Eden. But the time for such talk is gone.
Sometimes,
perhaps, it is easier to forget than to recall
how men
each day die with visions offered by fools
like us. Stone and Fire, Fire and Stone—
we kill as
we always have. And we choose not to believe.
We
continue living; we refuse to grieve.
